The Confluence of Cyber Crime and Terrorism

About the Author

Steven P. Bucci, Ph.D.Visiting Fellow, Douglas and Sarah Allison Center for Foreign and National Security PolicyDouglas and Sarah Allison Center for Foreign and National Security Policy

Today the world faces a wide array of cyber threats. The
majority of these threats are aimed at the Western democracies and
the Western-leaning countries of other regions.

The reason for this is simple: They are ripe targets. These
countries are either highly dependent, almost completely in some
cases, on cyber means for nearly every significant societal
interaction or are racing toward that goal. They seek the speed,
accuracy, efficiency, and ease that a "wired" system of systems
brings and all the benefits that accrue to such a situation.

The danger we face is that there are many individuals, groups,
and states that desire to exploit those same systems for their own
purposes. There is a new threat on the horizon that must be
recognized and addressed.

Cyber threats we face today can be grouped into seven categories
that form a spectrum of sorts. (See Figure 1.) Any of these threat
groups can attack an individual, a nation-state, and anything in
between. They will exploit a lazy home computer user, an
inefficient corporate information technology system, or a weak
national infrastructure defense.

Levels of Danger

We are all in danger from these threats, which can be grouped as
low, medium, and high levels of danger. Any construct of this
nature is a simplification, but it does aid in discussions to have
the numerous possible actions defined into manageable groups.

At the low danger end, there are two groups of threats. The
lowest level is the individual hacker. He operates for his own
personal benefit: for pride, self-satisfaction, or individual
financial gain. He constitutes an annoyance. The hacker category
also includes small groups who write malware (malicious software)
to prove that they can or who attack small organizations due to
personal or political issues.

With the hacker at the low end of the spectrum are small
criminal enterprises and most disgruntled insiders. These too are
low-level annoyances, except for the unfortunate individuals they
exploit as their primary targets. These operate Internet scams,
bilking people out of personal information, and may even perpetrate
extortion through threats.

Continuing along the spectrum, the medium-level threats are
harder to break down in a rank order. Each threat grouping targets
different entities. These targets would consider their attackers
very dangerous and a critical threat. These medium-level threats
include:

Terrorist use of the Internet;

Cyber espionage, which is also helped by insiders at times,
both corporate and national security types, including probes for
vulnerabilities and implementation of backdoors; and

High-level organized crime.

All three of these groupings can have extremely detrimental
effects on a person, a business, a government, or a region. They
occur regularly and define the ongoing significant threats we face
every day.

The high-level threats involve the full power of nation-states.
These come in two major groups. The first is a full-scale
nation-state cyber attack. The closest example of this was the
assault made on Estonia in 2007. There, the highly developed
network of a small country was temporarily brought to its knees.
Portrayed by some as a simple display of public outrage over the
moving of a statue, most felt there was more going on and that a
government hand was at play.

This dispute over the responsibility makes this an imperfect
example, but it is a highly troubling harbinger of the future. One
former Department of Defense (DoD) leader stated that over 1
million computers were used in this event, coming from over 70
countries.

The other possibility is the cyber enablement of a kinetic
attack. So far, we can only look to the 2008 assault on Georgia to
study this category. Georgia was not as dependent on the cyber
realm as was Estonia, but the cyber assault that preceded the
Russian military's ground attack into Ossetia severely hindered
Georgia's response. Again, it may be an imperfect example, but it
has given us much to consider. The same former DoD official
described it this way:

[T]heir cyber special operations forces isolated the president
by disabling all his cyber connectivity, then their cyber air force
carpet bombed the entire national network, and finally their cyber
Delta Force infiltrated and rewrote code that kept their network
from working correctly even after it was brought back up. It was a
highly sophisticated attack.

These two potential threats constitute the high end of the
cyber-threat spectrum.

A Construct for Planning

During the Cold War and beyond, the military and security
communities used a paradigm for planning that allowed them to
determine against which of a large number of possible threats they
should plan. They would determine both the most dangerous
threat and the most likely threat. These were seldom the
same.

During that period, there was near-universal agreement that
full-scale thermonuclear exchange between the U.S. and NATO on one
side and the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact on the other was the
most dangerous threat. Fortunately, this was not the most likely
threat. Mutually assured destruction kept the fingers off the
triggers.

Planners therefore had to ascertain what scenario was the most
likely. For NATO, this was a large-scale conventional war on the
plains of Northern Europe, which all hoped would remain
non-nuclear. For the U.S., they added smaller-scale proxy wars
outside the European context. Today, we can use a similar process
to help us thoughtfully address cyber threats.

While we face a scenario emerging from the cyber-threat spectrum
that fully fits the part of the most dangerous threat, we must also
face and prepare for a most likely scenario that is unique and,
frankly, is not yet on the cyber-threat spectrum. This threat will
involve the joining of the growing cyber-crime capability we see
today with the terrorists' realization that the cyber realm is ripe
for exploitation and that joining with cyber criminals will be
their path to that exploitation.

The Most Dangerous Cyber Threat:
Nation-State Attacks

Clearly, as one looks at the spectrum of threats, the far end
delineates the possibilities we fear most. Developed nation-states,
acting as peer competitors, are the most dangerous potential
threat.

Nation-states possess hard power, including kinetically capable
militaries, economic strength, industrial bases, and scale of
assets. They can marshal the intellectual capital to develop cyber
armies--large numbers of operators with the best equipment, skilled
at developing and using new forms of attack. These will do the twin
tasks of both leveraging and enabling conventional intelligence,
signals, and mobility assets.

Nation-states can also use their considerable coercive powers to
harness civilian assets that technically fall outside the public
sector. This can be done by requiring active or passive collusion
with the government or by manipulating public sentiment to stir up
patriotic fervor while providing guidance (i.e., targeting) and
tools to the faithful.

All of the above factors allow nation-states with foresight to
develop and use enormous capabilities in the cyber realm. What is
today merely cyber espionage or probing of defenses can, in the
blink of an eye, be turned into a massive attack on the
infrastructure of an adversary.

Remember: Cyber forces do not need to deploy by ship, plane, or
truck, so there are no logistical delays or the usual indicators
and warnings. Cyber attacks could be used to disable defenses and
blind intelligence capabilities in preparation for a devastating
kinetic strike. These methods can slow the reactions of defenders
by clouding their operation picture or fouling their communications
means. Cyber attacks could bring down key command and control nodes
altogether, paralyzing any response to the attack.

If the attacker has used weapons of mass destruction (chemical,
biological, radiological, nuclear, and high-yield explosives) in
the kinetic part of the attack, the cyber component can also hinder
the ability to rally consequence-management assets. The victim will
have suffered a catastrophic attack and will be unable to respond
effectively to the results. The continued cyber intrusions will not
only keep them from striking back with any real effect, but may
make them ineffectual in mobilizing their first-responder
forces.

This kind of large-scale attack can only come from a
nation-state and obviously constitutes our most dangerous scenario.
It is very fortunate that it is also not a very likely one.

The reason is old-fashioned deterrence. In the same way our
cyber and physical infrastructures make us vulnerable to this
scenario, any attacking nation-state must have its own
infrastructure capabilities to be able to execute it. Those cyber
capabilities and kinetic forces used in the attack are also
potential targets, as is the remainder of the attacker's critical
infrastructure.

Basically, it is unlikely that a nation-state would do this,
because they also have much at stake. Deterrence, in the same way
we have understood it for over 50 years, still applies to
nation-states in all the ways it does not apply to terrorists,
criminals, and other non-state actors.

A large-scale cyber attack or cyber-enabled kinetic attack by a
peer competitor on another country runs the risk of a large-scale
response from the target or the target's allies and friends. While
this will not dissuade every nation-state-backed cyber threat--the
thousands of probes, minor attacks, and espionage actions prove
that--it has continued and will continue to keep this type of
nightmare scenario from moving into the "likely" category. Yes, we
must prepare for it, but if this is the only thing we prepare for,
we will have failed our countries.

One final thought on this subject: Opinion leaders might point
to the situations in Estonia and Georgia mentioned earlier as
evidence that deterrence did not work in 2007 and 2008. Friendly
nations must explicitly state their intentions to protect and
support one another from this sort of attack in the same way we did
during the Cold War; without a strong declaratory policy of mutual
defense in cyber situations, there will be no deterrence.

If we fail in this, smaller nations will continue to be at risk
from larger, more powerful neighbors, and this is unacceptable. If
we act strongly and in a united fashion, this will constrain
nation-states--but will not constrain terrorists.

Terrorist Use of the Cyber Realm: From
Small Beginnings...

It is fortunate that so far, the major terrorist organizations
such as al-Qaeda and its franchises have not yet learned to fully
exploit the "opportunities" in the cyber realm. We would be foolish
to assume this state of affairs will persist.

Terrorists are limited in their understanding of the potential
for this medium. They do use it extensively, but not for offensive
actions. Most intelligence and law enforcement agencies agree that
they are limited to such areas as communications, propaganda,
financial dealings (fund-raising and fund transfers), recruitment,
and intelligence. There is some potential use for operational
planning and reconnaissance, but it is unconfirmed.

Communications security on the Internet is very attractive to
terrorists. The anonymity and difficulty of tracing interactions in
restricted, password-protected chat rooms and the use of encrypted
e-mails give terrorists a much greater degree of operational
security than other means of communications. This will continue to
be a major activity for terrorists over cyber channels.

Clearly, the terrorists are very good and getting better at
using the Internet for propaganda and fund-raising purposes. The
increasing sophistication of their messaging shows an understanding
of the potential of the cyber medium in this area. They are
reaching ever-increasing audiences. YouTube-like videos of terror
attacks feed the fervor of the faithful around the world and make
them feel a part of the struggle. Messaging over the Internet from
the leadership keeps them prominent in the minds of the mass
audience and makes the most isolated spokesperson seem
relevant.

These same channels are superb for fund-raising among the
dispersed peoples around the world. The reach and timeliness cannot
be matched by other communications means and greatly aids in their
fund-raising efforts. These same characteristics apply to their
recruitment programs, and the process of radicalizing individuals
no longer has to take place in person, but can be greatly enhanced
by cyber communication and teaching.

There are many very effective applications available that aid in
basic intelligence gathering. Google Earth and similar programs can
be obtained for free and will give street-view photos of potential
targets, as well as excellent route and obstacle information. The
tendency of most Western countries to post nearly everything there
is to know about critical infrastructures on unsecured Web sites is
a great boon to the terrorists and requires no more expertise than
an ability to use rudimentary search engines that small children
have mastered. All of this "research capability" assists the
terrorists in making their standard operation procedures much
easier and safer to polish to a high degree.

A new wrinkle that is developing is the use of virtual worlds.
There is hard evidence of money transfers having been made within
these worlds. This is done by using real cash to buy virtual
currency, conducting various transactions within the virtual
environment, and then converting it back into real cash again in a
completely different temporal location. It is all safe, clean,
legal, and nearly impossible to trace.

These virtual worlds also allow for meetings to occur in cyber
space that are even more deeply covered and protected than secure
chat rooms. The avatars used in virtual worlds are very difficult
to identify, and rules for interaction online allow for secret
activities that further shield those with much to hide.

An advanced application which has been discussed by intelligence
and law enforcement agencies is the use of virtual worlds to train
and rehearse for operations in the real world. This is clearly
possible, but no hard evidence is yet available to prove that
terrorists are now using the virtual worlds in this way.

Someone must lead the terrorists of the world to the next level
of cyber capability. It is unlikely that they will develop their
own cyber plans and abilities beyond a few experts to ensure they
are not being cheated or who can do operational cyber planning
correctly. To do more than that would take a great deal of time,
and they may be unwilling to wait. Unfortunately, they do not need
to wait, as they will probably do it by reaching out to the world
of cyber crime. There they will find willing partners.

Cyber Crime: Follow the Money

Cyber crime continues to be a booming business. What started as
an offshoot of individual hackers doing it for fun and pride has
grown into a huge (and still expanding) industry that steals,
cheats, and extorts the equivalent of many billions of dollars
every year. They steal from individuals, corporations, and
countries. It does not matter if it is simple scams to get gullible
people to give up money and access to their accounts or highly
sophisticated technical methods of harvesting mass amounts of
personal data that can be exploited directly or sold to others;
cyber crime is big money. The more sophisticated it gets, the more
organized it becomes, and it has matured to a frightening
level.

A lucrative target is data well beyond personal identity and
financial information. Infiltrating businesses and stealing
industrial secrets, pharmaceutical formulas, and like data can reap
huge profits for criminals.

There are several reports of utility facilities having their
SCADA (supervisory control and data acquisition) systems hacked and
seized by criminals. The attackers have threatened to shut down the
facility or worse if they were not paid enormous ransoms. No one
knows if the malefactors could have actually followed through on
the shutdown threats, as in each case the money was paid. The
owners deemed it a credible threat and could not afford to have
their enterprise closed or destroyed.

An interesting addition to this issue set is the illegal or
quasi-legal franchising of cyber crime. Criminals now market and
sell the tools of cyber crime. Root kits, hacking lessons, guides
to designing malware--it is all available. These range from
rudimentary "starter kits" to highly sophisticated programs that
are potentially very destructive.

The last and, in my mind, most interesting and insidious threat
is the rise of the botnets. Criminals cannot command entire nations
of computers as one would expect that coercive governments could if
they need to. Criminal syndicates have, however, developed huge
botnets with members all over the world: members that they control
without the actual owner of the machine even being aware of it.
These zombie networks serve their criminal masters without question
or hesitation. The criminals control them completely and can use
them directly for DDoS (distributed denial of service) attacks,
phishing, or malware distribution. They also rent them out to
others for cash.

An anecdote will illustrate how pervasive this is. During
an industry association meeting held in December of 2008, a U.S.
Department of Homeland Security (DHS) official involved in cyber
security related an incident that had occurred a few days prior. He
said he had been meeting with a group of business leaders, and they
expressed concern about a holiday season trend they had noticed.
They complained that every year many young people received new
computers as gifts, causing a big spike in computer intrusions.
They blamed this on the young people using the new devices to try
and hack government and business systems.

The DHS official explained to the leaders that they were only
half right. He went on to explain that the many new machines were
connected to the spike in intrusions--however, not because their
owners were all would-be hackers. The problem lay in the fact that
in some cases, within 10 to 15 minutes of a new computer being
hooked to the Internet, it was infected by malware and added to a
criminal botnet. The longest an unprotected or underprotected
computer would last was a day or two. It was criminal-controlled
botnets that were behind the spike in intrusions. They simply had
many new machines to utilize in their activities.

It is here that a new and very dangerous potential arises.

Terrorism Enabled by Cyber Criminals:
Most Likely Cyber Threat

There is no doubt that terrorists want badly to hurt the modern
Western and Western-leaning community of nations. The numerous dead
and wounded, the horrific damage of past successful attacks, as
well as the multiple foiled plots all make the deadly intent of the
terrorists abundantly clear to all. This cannot be denied. Their
continuing efforts to acquire and develop weapons of mass
destruction for use against civilian targets is also prima
facie evidence of this burning desire to do us harm in any way
possible.

Terrorist organizations surely can find a number of highly
trained, intelligent, and computer-literate people who are in
agreement with their cause. These people can be taught to develop
code, write malware, and hack as well as anyone. They cannot, in a
timely manner, develop the kind of large-scale operational
capabilities that a nation-state possesses. This is what they need
to make a truly effective assault on the West in the cyber
realm.

Two factors give them another option. First, they do not really
need to attack an entire nation to achieve success. They desire to
create a large event, but it does not necessarily need to be as
extensive as a full nation-state attack. The second factor is that
they also have abundant funds and potential access to even more.
These funds open up the criminal option, which will give the
terrorists the capability to be extraordinarily destructive.

The West has a huge number of intelligence and law enforcement
assets dedicated to stopping the proliferation of weapons of mass
destruction. Any movement of these devices or materials related to
them will sound the alarm across the world. Numerous arrests of
people attempting to traffic in WMD or related materials have been
made. This effort has nullified the effect of the excellent
financial assets some terrorists have and frustrated their efforts
to acquire WMD capabilities. We do not have the same type of
watchdog systems in place to prevent cyber enablement from
occurring.

If a cash-rich terrorist group would use its wealth to hire
cyber criminal botnets for their own use, we would have a major
problem. A terrorist group so enabled could begin to overwhelm the
cyber defenses of a specific corporation, government organization,
or infrastructure sector and do much damage. They could destroy or
corrupt vital data in the financial sector, cripple communications
over a wide area to spread panic and uncertainty.

Similar to the nation-state attack scenarios discussed earlier,
terrorists could use botnet-driven DDoS attacks to blind security
forces at a border crossing point as a means of facilitating an
infiltration operation, or a cyber attack in one area of a country
to act as a diversion so a "conventional" kinetic terrorist attack
can occur elsewhere. They could even conduct SCADA attacks on
specific sites and use the system to create kinetic-like effects
without the kinetic component. A good example would be to open the
valves at a chemical plant near a population center, creating a
Bhopal-like event.

The permutations are as endless as one's imagination. The cyber
capabilities that the criminals could provide would in short order
make any terrorist organization infinitely more dangerous and
effective.

Some have opined that cyber attacks are not suitable as terror
tactics because they lack the drama and spectacular effect of, say,
a suicide bomber. This does not take into account the ability of
the terrorists to adapt. As our intelligence and law enforcement
agencies continue to effectively combat the terrorists, they will
continue to evolve. The terrorists' old methods will be augmented
and improved. They will need to develop more imagination and
versatility if they are to conduct successful operations.

This evolutionary capability has not been in short supply among
the terrorist leadership. They will not define "spectacular" so
narrowly. Imagine the operational elegance of simply hitting the
return key and seeing thousands of enemies die a continent away, or
watching a bank go under due to the destruction of all its data by
an unknown force. This will be enormously attractive to terrorist
groups. Additionally, the combination of cyber methods and kinetic
strikes could be spectacular regardless of one's definition.

Criminals, for their part, are motivated by greed and power. Few
of the leaders of the enormous cyber organized crime world would
hesitate at selling their capabilities to a terrorist loaded with
cash. That fact, combined with the ever-growing terrorist awareness
of cyber vulnerabilities, makes this set of scenarios not just
likely, but nearly inevitable.

Conclusion

Terrorists will recognize the opportunity the cyber world offers
sooner or later. They will also recognize that they need help to
properly exploit it. It is unlikely they will have the patience to
develop their own completely independent capabilities. At the same
time, the highly developed, highly capable cyber criminal networks
want money and care little about the source.

This is a marriage made in Hell. The threat of a full
nation-state attack, either cyber or cyber-enabled kinetic, is our
most dangerous threat. We pray deterrence will continue to hold,
and we should take all measures to shore up that deterrence.

Terrorists will never be deterred in this way. They will
continue to seek ways to successfully harm us, and they will join
hands with criminal elements to do so. A terrorist attack enabled
by cyber crime capabilities will now be an eighth group of cyber
threats, and it will be the most likely major event we will need to
confront.

Some would say that cyber crime is a purely law enforcement
issue, with no national security component. That is a dubious
"truth" today. This is not a static situation, and it will
definitely be more dangerously false in the future. Unless we get
cyber crime under control, it will mutate into a very real, very
dangerous national security issue with potentially catastrophic
ramifications. It would be far better to address it now rather than
in the midst of a terrorist incident or campaign of incidents
against one of our countries.

Terrorism enabled by cyber criminals is our most likely major
cyber threat. It must be met with all our assets.

Dr. Steven P. Bucci is IBM's Issue
Lead for Cyber Security Programs and a part of the Global
Leadership Initiative, the in-house think tank for IBM's
public-sector practice. He most recently served as Deputy Assistant
Secretary of Defense, Homeland Defense and Defense Support to Civil
Authorities. Dr. Bucci delivered these remarks at a meeting of The
Heritage Foundation's Cyber Security Working Group. The views
expressed are his own and do not necessarily reflect the
institutional position or views of IBM, its board of directors, or
any of its subsidiaries.

About the Author

Steven P. Bucci, Ph.D.Visiting Fellow, Douglas and Sarah Allison Center for Foreign and National Security PolicyDouglas and Sarah Allison Center for Foreign and National Security Policy